Embrace The Camera: New Glasses!

In an effort to use up our flexible spending money from last year, D and I decided to get new glasses.  For whatever reason, I was pretty darn excited to get some new frames. I guess it's just fun to have something new and different.

I slipped on the new frames and began to reminisce about my very first pair of glasses.  I was in 4th grade and picked those mauve and gold frames all by myself.  We purchased them in a mall and I still remember looking across to the other stores with total wonder at how clear everything had become. Such a vivid memory after all of these years.  It shows what an impact clear vision can have on one's life.  I could probably come up with some pretty great analogies with that last statement, but I'll leave that to you.
I went through my old photo album in search of a good picture of me, when I was 10, sporting my new glasses.  I found one that made me so happy.  My grandfather, cousin and me (all wearing glasses. Yes!) on the back patio of my grandparents' home. Here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Pre-braces and rocking my purple Oshkosh overalls.  Very nice!

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ 

This post is participating in:



 

Wordless Wednesday: Peek-a-boo

Shhh...I think I see her hiding in the coats...

BOO!

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

This post is participating in Wordless Wednesday.

Watch Out for Bunnies!

Just noodling around with a Martha Stewart template and creating some holiday appropriate road signs.
Enjoy!

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

This post is participating in:

Moment by Moment

What follows is some serious soul-searching interspersed with cute pictures of my kids. Bear with me.

I feel ashamed to admit how often I lose my cool around my children.  In all honesty, not losing my cool at least once during the day is a rare exception. Not only do these kids know a great deal about how to push my buttons, but they are also extremely irrational. The combo of the two is a sure fire way to bring out what I call "Mean Mommy."

Holy cow!

I've been mulling this over a lot lately.  Some days are just bad.  One day in recent memory was particularly bad. It started off with an incident at Hobby Lobby that culminated in my screaming at my kids in the car.  It was not a proud moment.  There is nothing that makes me feel worse than raising my voice to my children.

Did you say something, Mama?

There are days when I feel like every moment (literally every moment) I am making a conscious choice to be the parent I want to be and not the alternative: that red faced, screaming, growling, mean mommy that I don't even recognize myself in.  I don't want my children to remember that person.

We're too busy watching TV to look at the camera.

So, I've been working on strategies to help keep Mean Mommy at bay.  One such strategy is anticipation: remembering what is going to set them off (or myself) before it happens. That is way easier said than done.  Another is recognizing that I'm not dealing with rational human beings. I'm dealing with people who are emotionally volatile, underdeveloped and short. People who have no idea from one second to the next what they really want or need.

I need your camera, Mama.

My last thing: Attitude and a huge dose of perspective.  There is so much that happens during the day, so many things that irk me that really aren't that important when I keep the proper perspective.
I was privileged to teach a lesson to a group of women and young girls at church on Sunday entitled "What matters most." During the lesson I asked a question that I'm not even sure I was prepared to answer for myself:
What excuses do you cling to that keep you from being the kind of daughter, sister, friend, wife or mother you know you should be? 
It's so easy to come up with excuses for why I lost my cool.  I'm tired, I'm hungry, they won't listen, I have too much that needs to get done today, they won't cooperate, there's pee on the floor, they made a huge mess, she has to touch everything, I can't take the whining, etc...

I'm buttering you up.

Why do I cling to my excuses for having a bad attitude when there is so much joy to be had in each moment?  

Joy is a Star Wars ABC book.

I need to remember that my time with these little ones is short. It won't be long before they are out of my arms and into the world where I can't protect them. There will come a time when I don't get to see their sweet little faces every day; a time when they don't want Eskimo kisses or to be picked up and just held. There will be a time when they don't think I'm hilarious anymore and when they won't seek me out for comfort. A time when the Spider Man costume gets put into storage along with the baby dolls and loveys. A time when they simply grow-up.

So what am I teaching them now?  What do they learn when they see me throwing temper tantrums over things that just don't matter? They are watching me every second and learning how to respond to the situations they'll encounter as they make their way in the world. I'm responsible for that.  It's my job to make the decision every moment to be the mom I want to be.

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

Spring Cleaning: The Pantry

When we moved to our new home, we were so anxious to just be in that I left a lot of the organizing tasks on the back burner. I don't even want to think about what my basement looks like...
Anyway, Spring is coming and I thought I'd start my organizing off with FINALLY bringing some order to our kitchen pantry. 
Here's the before:

It's hard to tell, but the shelves are fairly deep and it was in total chaos.
(I realize as I post this picture that I am broadcasting to the world our eating habits, *gulp*)
 I have been putting off clearing out this pantry because it makes me tired to look at it, but I finally got up the courage and found a really cute little helper.

Here we are.

Ready to clean?

After clearing off the shelves (she cleared anything she could reach)
I put her to work dusting the floor and shelves.

All done!

I threw away an unbelievable amount and then put the majority of it back in bins.  It is far easier to see what is in there now and not have things get lost in the back.  I still need to figure out a good can storing solution.

Well, it's not as cute as the pantries of Pinterest. Oh well, I just don't see myself painting, stenciling or wall papering it. I'm also not planning on investing in cute canisters. That said, it works for us and now I know what's in there. Success!

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

This post is participating in:

Wordless Wednesday: My Black Days

"Then come my black days. Mad. And loud. I howl. I growl at every cloud."

Dr. Seuss







 This post is participating in: Wordless Wednesday

Experimenting with Brooches

 I've had a couple of cross-stitch pieces sitting around that I haven't been able to decide what to do with.  I first thought that I could applique them to something, but my second thought was that I'd love to be able to use them for more than one piece.  I want to be able to move them around as an accessory. So, I decided to experiment and create a couple of brooches.

Cross-Stitch Brooches

 Materials:

Cross-Stitch Sample

Craft Spray Adhesive (or adhesive of choice)

Felt

Bar Pins

Scissors

 Glue bar pin to the back of cross stitch piece

Cut slit in felt for bar pin. Glue felt to back of cross-stitch

 

 Trim excess cross-stitch material

  Model it on your cute vintage cardigan

 Two brooches, ready to accessorize.

Jellybean actually giggled when she saw these and then tried to figure out how to pin both of them on.

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

This post is participating in:
 

Asparagus is not "yucky"

I was in the grocery store a couple of weeks ago and I over heard a conversation between a mother and her (maybe) 5 year old son.  They were standing next to a large display of asparagus in the middle of the produce section.  Here's what I heard:

Boy: Mom, what's that?
Mom: It's Asparagus.
Boy: Can we get some?
Mom: No, Asparagus is yucky.

This small interchange really stuck in my craw.  It took all my will power to keep myself from rushing the asparagus stand and saying very loudly, "Asparagus?!  I love asparagus! And what a good price for this time of year! I can't wait to get this home!"  Unfortunately, though I do like asparagus, it just wasn't on my list that day.

I've been thinking a lot about why this bothered me so much. It occurred to me that it irritates me because I have such a hard time getting my kids to eat their vegetables. If my child asked if we could purchase something green from the produce section (even brussel sprouts, "yuck". tee hee) I'd be all for it.  If I didn't know how to prepare it, I'd go straight home and find a recipe online for it.  I'd do this because I am invested in my child exploring new tastes and experiences with food and not limiting his palette based on my own preferences.  He's already limited enough by my cooking skills;  I certainly shouldn't be denying him a healthy option or even turning him against it by calling it "yucky."

I'm no expert, but this line of thought got me thinking about ways I've discovered to get my kids to eat foods they claim to dislike on first sight. Aside from bribing, here are some tricks that have worked in this house.

Carrots give you super powers:

I just finished a great article entitled, "Raising Boys: A dad's parenting advice for moms." In the article, the author discusses the affinity that little boys have with superheros. He states, "Boys, even at a young age, realize the importance of super powers."  I've discovered this first hand with my oldest.  He is in a very serious Spiderman stage and is very interested in superheros.  One evening, during dinner, he decided that he was not going to eat his carrots, claiming, "I don't like them."  I leaned over and said, "Do you want to know a secret? Carrots give you super powers. They'll help you see in the dark."  Well, that did the trick, I've never seen him eat anything as fast as he downed those carrots.

There's a party in my tummy:
Occasionally,  we'll have a meal where the kids will eat almost everything and then not touch one or two items.  This is when an enthusiastic rendition of the Yo Gabba Gabba favorite comes in. "There's a party in my tummy, so yummy, so yummy."  In the song, the character Brobee neglects to eat the carrots and green beans on his plate. He discovers that the veggies are heart-broken that they haven't been invited to the party in his tummy.  This reasoning scores big with the toddler set. 

Don't underestimate the power of a favorite cartoon character:
I have tried and failed to get my kids to eat scrambled eggs several times over the years.  They wouldn't even touch them.  Enter one of their favorite characters: Caillou.  After watching a single episode, Buddy was begging me to make scrambled eggs.  In the show, Caillou gets to visit a farm and finds out where eggs come from.  Then he brings home some "chicken fresh eggs" and his mother scrambles them for him.   Well, I made the eggs and both Jellybean and Buddy gobbled them down.  Amazing.  Why can't I have that kind of influence all of the time? 

Choosing and Naming:
Unlike the "yucky asparagus parent," I've had pretty good success getting my kids to eat foods that they have had the opportunity to choose for themselves.  I got a great idea from a post on Make and Takes a while ago.  They purchased the book Eating the Alphabet and then made a goal to purchase some of the fruits and vegetables in the book to try.  I tried this experiment with kumquats.  It was fun letting them pick something new to try. Though, I will say that neither myself or my children were all that impressed by the taste of kumquat.  Still, it was a new experience and a fun one as well.

Allowing your child to re-name a food will make them more likely to eat it.  I'm sure you've heard the idea of calling broccoli "little trees." From the time we introduced milk to Buddy, we had to call it "moo-juice."  He was a fan of juice and not milk.  Funny how changing the name made all of the difference. Last night we ate "alien pasta." (pasta shells in white cheddar sauce with peas and tuna). It's weird how fast that pasta disappeared once I stated that it was from outerspace.

Asking the Opposite:
Are my toddlers the only kids out there that enjoy doing the exact opposite of what I tell them to do? When I get fed up, I will sometimes say, "Fine, I don't want you to eat your broccoli. You'd better not eat it."  This comment will be met with a giggle and then at least one bite of the offending vegetable. That sure showed me. 

Fine, I guess I'll eat it:
In our house, Buddy and Jellybean are extremely possessive about their food, even if they claim to dislike it.  If I take away the offending plate and throw it away? No problem.  If I *gasp* threaten to eat their food myself?  Major problem.  For some reason the statement, "fine, if you're not going to eat it, then I will," is intolerable. How dare I eat their food? This will usually cause them to eat at least some of their food just to prevent me from eating it.

Nothing is foolproof and obviously I'm blessed with kids that are "pretty good" eaters.  That said, any strategy I've employed has met with failure at least at some point.  What strategies have you come up with for getting your kids to eat their veggies and other healthy foods?? 

Just for your viewing pleasure:  8 Super Health Benefits of Asparagus

Knife Skills: 8 Things I wish I'd known years ago.

For my birthday last year, D got me a gift certificate to Sur La Table. It's really an amazing, gourmet level kitchen store and they also teach cooking and technique classes.  I decided to use my certificate towards a class. They had a ton of options, but the one that stood out to me was Essential Knife Skills.  I mean, I could have gone with the Ultimate Bacon Menu option, but I thought learning how to actually use my knives would be more useful in the long run (and possibly healthier).

I really enjoy cooking, but have no delusions about my knife wielding abilities.  This class went from the very basics to some fun advanced techniques to wow our friends with. We learned everything from how to prepare our working space and picking a proper knife to how to hold our knives and basic knife maintenance.  I picked up some really valuable tips in the class that I thought I'd share. Many of these were major "Ah, ha" moments for me and some (read: all) were things I think I really should have known a long while ago.

By the way, just on an aside: Don't you find it annoying when people take a class geared for those of us with little to no experience and then act like they know as much or more than the instructor? Yeah, I'm speaking directly to you middle-aged-man-with-an-entire-set-of-Shun-knives-that-you-actually-purchased-in-Japan. It is apparent to me that you only took the class to boost your ego and annoy others. 

Anyway...

8 things I learned in my knife skills class that I wish I'd known years ago:

 1. Use the right knife for the job:

Growing up, I only ever remember my mother using one (seriously one) knife for just about everything. (We did have some steak knives as well, but I only remember using those when cutting cardboard for school projects. My memory may be a tad selective on this point.) From an online search, the closest description of my mother's knife is a 9" Kitchen Utility Slicer.  I have a hard time wrapping my mind around using one crappy knife for everything. That knife would be virtually worthless in my current kitchen.  So, I wasn't totally surprised by the fact that there is type of knife specifically designed for every job in the kitchen. I have my chef's knife, my santuko knife, my paring knife and an assortment of utility blades, but that has never stopped me from using my smallest utility blade for chopping up an apple or from using my chef's knife to supreme and orange (actually just learned how to do that, I'm awesome).
Apparently, a knife is already a pretty dangerous weapon and using the wrong knife makes it more dangerous...who knew?

This brings me to my second point:

2. Use a SHARP knife:
A dull knife is way more dangerous than a sharp knife.  I'm sure this is common knowledge for most people, yet, I had never sharpened my knives. The old knife from my childhood was so dull and battered that I have no doubt we were seriously taking our digits for granted by using it for almost every job that required a knife. It is amazing what a really sharp knife can do for your general emotional state in the kitchen. Gone are the days of hacking through your food and mangling every tomato you ever set a blade to. By the way, fewer tears when slicing an onion with a sharp blade. (oh and also a cold onion. Just put it in fridge 30 mins before you slice it. That's just a tiny, but useful tip for you.)

3. Sharpen your knives once every year:  
To keep your knives in tip-top condition and in the safest condition possible, take them to be sharpened once a year. There are people that do this and it is surprisingly affordable.

4. Honing:
During the year, make sure you hone your knives EVERY time you use them.  I had absolutely no clue what the difference between sharpening and honing was.  As it turns out, sharpening shaves the blade and honing realigns the blade.  Because I didn't want to ruin my blades by using a honing steel improperly, I picked up this nifty little sharpener/honer.
It isn't a true sharpener, though it will shave burrs off of your blade if you have dropped it, or after a large amount of chopping.  I run my knives through it once I'm done using them and before I put them back in their block. 


5. Get yourself a bench scraper:

You know when you have just finished dicing an onion and you need to scrape it off of your board into the pan?  I always just used my knife to do this.  Essentially, if I had known how to sharpen or hone, this would have totally messed up my beautiful work.  Do NOT use the blade of your knife as a scraping tool.  Use this bench scraper instead. I already had one of these bench scrapers in my drawer. Of course, I only used it to scrape dough off of my board when I was baking bread.  Turns out that it is a wonderful tool for transferring food from your board to a pan or bowl.  If you must use your knife, use the back of it and not the blade. 

6. Keep a damp rag next to your workspace:
Speaking of blade maintenance, it is a good idea to keep your knife clean.  If you place a damp rag next to your cutting board while you are working, you will be able to clean your blade immediately and not have to jackhammer minced garlic off of it later (which is good exercise and all...) Also, it is great to have a damp cloth handy to wipe down your board quickly between ingredients. 

7. How to hold a knife:
This is one thing that I really didn't have a clue about.  You are actually supposed to pinch the heel of the blade (right in front of the bolster) with you thumb and pointer and then wrap the rest of your fingers around the handle.  This technique has revolutionized my chopping, slicing and dicing.  It gives you a lot more control. It is awkward at first if you are used to a different grip, but I highly recommend it.

8. Keep your work space clear:
You will make your life and chopping easier if you allow yourself the entirety of the cutting board.  I am guilty of leaving scraps, ingredients I've just chopped, additional knives and all kinds of odds and ends on the cutting board until I'm mincing in a very tiny patch of board amongst all of that riff-raff.  I have made my life a lot easier now that I make a conscious effort to clear the board before I begin working.

I learned so much in the class. I'd share more, but I don't want to be accused of ripping off the class just for this post.  I would definitely recommend finding a knife skills class in your area.  Knowing the essentials has really changed my food prep and made me more confident in the kitchen.

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

This post is participating in:
Thrifty Thursday
Seven Thirty Three
House of Hepworths
Friday Flair @ WhipperBerry

Wordless Wednesday: Sunday Valentines

For the last day in February: My little ones being silly after church in their valentines best. They refuse to pose for me and have decided that regular smiles were so two weeks ago...

 

 Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

This post is participating in Wordless Wednesday!  Join in the fun!

5 Minute Craft: Peek-a-boo Puppet

My daughter is obsessed with baby dolls.  She is so obsessed with receiving baby dolls as gifts, that she thinks that every present she receives (or anyone else for that matter) is going to contain a doll. Life can be disappointing sometimes. Especially when a prettily wrapped present does not contain a baby.

This is why I thought she'd get a kick out of this 5 minute craft that I whipped together during nap time.  What I put together was really intended to be a prototype, but it turned out cute enough, that I decided to just take pictures of it.

Peek-a-boo Puppet:

 paper

pen

clothespins

glue

markers

scissors

First, I sketched out a little present and a baby doll.  Behold my amazing drawing skills...

Next I cut them out and glued them to the clothespin:

 Easy Peasy!

When Jellybean got up from her nap and saw the little wrapped box she whispered, "Baby." When she saw that there was, in fact, a baby doll inside, she smiled and exclaimed, "My Turn!"

Success!

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ